I'm only lightly familiar with the "Navy-way" of bridge/navigation watches.

Can anybody here outline how many are on watch at a time and what they're supposed to be doing?

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OOD - Officer of the Deck. Responsible for the safety, navigation, and operation of the ship during his watch. In that role, he answers only to the CO or, in tactical situations, to the Tactical Action Officer (TAO), and even then, only in the maneuver or fighting of the ship. He should know where every surface and sub-surface contact within sensor range is, along with the status of weapons, the engine room, the plan of the day (POD), etc.

JOOD - Junior Officer of the Deck. Also called the Conning Officer. Responsible for the safe steering of the vessel. He gives the rudder and engine commands. Reports to the OOD. He should know where every surface and sub-surface contact within sensor range is.

CICWO - Combat Information Center Watch Officer. Responsible for ensuring that the CIC watch is doing their job, part of which is safe navigation and maneuvering of the ship, and another part of which is tracking all surface, sub-surface, and air contacts.

Lookouts - At least three of them (Port, Starboard, and Aft). They would have been reporting the proximity of any vessel within visual range. I'd say this tanker was within visual range.

TAO - Tactical Action Officer. Assuming one was on watch (normal during operations, but not necessarily during peacetime transits), he would know where every contact in sensor range is, as well as any coming in from other ships and aircraft over the data link.

If this happened during an UNREP (Underway Replenshment), then the Captain was or should have been on the bridge. The XO may or may not have been. I remember the XO normally being up forward or back aft at one of the UNREP stations, with the Ops officer being at the other.

So, in short, the OOD, JOOD, CICWO, SS, and CO are probably all toast. Others will depend upon the logs showing recommendations and warnings. In fact, if the logs show, for example, that the CICWO, OOD, and JOOD all recommended appropriate maneuvers to avoid collision, but the CO ignored them, they will stand a good chance of saving their skins.

No matter what happens or what the logs show, however, the CO's career is over. The tanker could have been coming to ram the ship on purpose, and the CO would still be responsible.

There might be more to this story...I have heard many different rumors of what was going on...therefore, until USNAVCENT/C5F releases their investigation, everything is just assumptions. At this point, no action has been taken against any personnel.

I guess my next question would be given that there seems to be an incredible amount of information on hand to allow the OOD to make navigational decisions, how is that information passed to him? How does one filter out what's important and what's not? Can it become information overload regarding a simple traffic encounter that thousands of ships (navy and not) make every day? Does the OOD or JOOD actually get their head into a radar or use the VHF? How about visually checking the bearing drift rate of a target? Or are they purely relying on others to do that stuff for them and make recommended "solutions" that the OOD then decides on and executes?

I'm curious because on the commercial side, there is one person doing the jobs of about four of the people you listed. I know it's different, being a combat environment and having to have a tactical edge for when bad things happen, but this should have been a pretty straight-forward transit. The merchant ships transiting Hormuz probably only have two people on the bridge.

There is no doubt that in some places like the Straits of Gibraltar or the Straits of Mallaca, the surface picture can just be a nightmare. So many contacts that even the cartoon "Broadside" made fun of it years ago.

In terms of "how does one deal with it", the answer is simple: training and experience. The more of it you do, the easier it gets....... to a point.

The information flows in what seems to an outsider to be a disorganized torrent, but once you learn the ins and outs it's simply a matter of juggling. Yes, the OOD and JOOD have access to the radar scopes, and the OOD usually has permission to use the VHF as needed. When things are hairy, the JOOD may have his eyes out the window while the OOD is running the radar and the maneuvering boards (a paper plot that gives you such useful info as a contacts course, speed, closest point of approach, the bearing and time of the CPA, and other stuff like wind direction, course to steer to avoid another contact, etc.)

What is happening on the bridge should also be happening back in CIC, with the CICWO passing forward recommendations for courses and speeds over the 21MC (the ***** box) or some other circuit. As such, people have their work checked as they go.

Yes, bearing drifts are taken, normally either by the JOOD or OOD, or on demand by a lookout.

In short (and barring anything extraordinary in this case), there is absolutely no reason whatsoever that this should happen. As said above, however, the investigation will get to the bottom of it. The Navy does not take kindly to its ships getting dinged up, and tends to keep digging until it finds out why it happened.

I am still confident, however, that unless the CICWO, OOD, and JOOD gave proper recommendations to the CO and he ignored them, that ALL of them are toast. It's just the way it goes.

It is true that many merchant ships will have only two people on the bridge, but there are a few things that impact the stark difference. The first is technology; some of the automated whiz-bang systems available to modern ships are not available to warships simply because these systems need to be able to survive battle damage, but are too fragile to do so. Second, most commercial ships are operating under the profit motive, and as such crew is minimized. Third, not everyone is as obsessed with safety and redundancy as the U.S. Navy. Believe me, it's not because the merchant mariners are any better or smarter or better trained than the Navy guys.

I wouldn't call it unusual. The ESSEX CO wasn't immediately fired after the ship collided with YUKON, just a few months ago. VADM Miller is probably letting the investigation run its course before ultimately deciding what to do.

Another thing that stinks about this is that the damage appears to be the kind that will require a stay at a shipyard in order to repair. That means another ship will have to plug the gap. Somebody's rotation stateside just went into the CHT system....